Integrative Medicine Blog

The other day I was marveling at the fact that I hadn’t come down with a cold or flu all year! To the surprise of my pride, the next morning I woke with chills, mild fatigue, and rhinitis. Now I do see my missteps of the previous day-getting overjoyed with the sunshine and warm weather I went outside with damp hair and a lighter jacket, thus making myself more vulnerable to cold and flu viruses. I also had a big cup of hot chocolate and later that night was walking in the cold March wind to my car returning from a concert, wearing the same light jacket.

The Winter Olympics of 2010 are over. We the audience had the privelege and pleasure to observe as for hundreds of competitors, years of hard work and a lifetime of dreaming came down to a single event, movement or even a single hundredth of a second. It was a chance to view life compressed and miniaturized right before our eyes into an intense and emotionally explosive period of days.

Would you believe that a good night’s sleep can make you hurt the next day? Or make your chronic pain worse? It can. I see many people who wake up in more pain than when they went to sleep. There are a number of ways that your sleeping positions and habits can make you sore the next morning, or even make existing problems worse.

Everyone knows stretching and exercise are healthy ways to feel better and to get into shape. After a yoga class you feel better than when you came. This is because of something called the parasympathetic nervous system. When we do yoga, we activate the parasympathetic nervous system through stretching and breathing. The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for slowing down our bodies through muscle relaxation, calming the mind, and results in better digestion, better immunity, lower blood pressure and lower heart rate.

Here is a big incentive to keep stretching, or add it to your health regimen. I just learned from an article on MSNBC that a study has found that women who are more flexible have about 7% less arterial stiffness and lower blood pressure than women who are less flexible. When you improve your flexibility by stretching it helps expand the arteries and keeps them more pliable, which improves heart function.

There are a great many reasons and methods to celebrate the winter holiday season. Numerous religious holidays, New Years and the American holiday of Thanksgiving have a tendency to keep us moving at top speed to keep up. In Chinese medicine, the coming of winter is associated with the movement of the water archetype.

In my practice I have worked with a number of patients who have this diagnosis and are trying to conceive. I chose to write about this topic because it’s a very common condition; and one which can be positively affected by Chinese medicine.

A study out of the University of Rochester shows that meditation and the opportunity to share emotions in a non judgmental way helps decrease physician stress while enhancing an experience of connectedness between physician and patient. The study, recently published in JAMA (9/23/09) was authored by a group led by Michael Krasner, M.D. They found that, with the meditation practices, physicians experienced a greater sense of well-being and satisfaction with their work.

I was interviewed today by a student at SUNY Albany who was doing a paper on natural healing. At the end of a series of very well thought out questions, she asked me if there was anything else that I would like people to know about acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. I had to pause for a moment to consider the question before beginning to answer.

This has been a bumper year for ticks and that has resulted in as big a year for Lyme disease here in the Northeast. While craniosacral therapy can’t treat or cure Lyme disease, it can definitely make a big difference in the amount of pain and discomfort you find yourself in and helps speed the healing process.